Pardon me if I smell a little worse than usual this week. I've been dumpster diving in the PR bin, the rankest receptacle of music industry waste, and I've come up with a dripping fistful of the month's hottest garbage.

We'll start with the popular misconception that all publicity is good publicity:

A year after her GRAMMYs debut, "Gun Girl" Sasha Gradiva is rushed to the hospital for exhaustion and dehydration on the day of the awards show

LOS ANGELES — As this year's 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards get underway, many are still talking about the stars who made fashion statements at last year's awards: Fergie, Nicki Minaj, and Jessie J to name a few, but none made a bigger splash than newcomer Sasha Gradiva. Just a year ago Gradiva took the GRAMMYs by storm with her "terminator" meets Barbie getup, but on the heels of her #LOVERSWANTEDTOUR the singer was rushed to Saint Francis hospital in Memphis, TN yesterday to be treated for exhaustion and dehydration.

Last year, a mostly unknown Russian pop singer named Sasha Gradiva hit the Grammy red carpet — who knows why she was there? — wearing a gown festooned with guns. Some people noticed; nobody is still talking about it.

Now, in some harebrained gambit, her PR agency has decided to insert her back into the Grammy spotlight by planting a weirdly celebratory story about her hospital stay (they even included an unglamorous photo of Sasha looking bored in a hospital bed).

God knows why they did this. Maybe they were trying to explain her absence from the Grammys without admitting she just wasn't invited this year, or maybe they're trying to cultivate a hardcore party image with the "exhaustion and dehydration" thing. They must know that everyone in the entire universe will read that as a euphemism for something terrible, like "cocaine nose collapse" or "speedball heart attack" or "torso bursting with spider eggs."

My best guess is they needed an excuse to remind everyone of her gun dress, which was a minor story a year ago, and this was as good a chance as they were going to get. Here's some free PR advice: now that flashing guns in public is about as popular as being engulfed in flames, 2013 might not be the right time to remind everyone about the gun dress. If none of her singles are taking off and you still need a PR angle, you could try positioning her as, like, "Sasha Gradiva, the most exhausted and dehydrated woman in showbiz," or something.

And now, from the News Stories Manufactured Entirely for My Benefit Department:

The Big Hurt: We floss econo You might recall a slew of ominous articles in 2007 proclaiming that hip-hop was through. Sales were way down, and the culprits were clear: jewelry, violence, and naughty dancing.

The Big Hurt: 10-year glitch It boggles the mind that as recently as a decade ago, if you wanted to hear "Knockin' da Boots" by H-Town (and you did, believe me), you'd have to perform a primitive prayer ritual: you'd call some creepy guy with a really deep voice and beg him to play it, then wait by your radio for an hour in the hope that he'd answer your plea.

Review: La Roux at the Paradise "I could have been singing this at the Grammys — but I'm here with you tonight," declared Elly Jackson, the public face of La Roux, with a detectable dash of annoyance folded into several dollops of playful sarcasm.

The Big Hurt: Pancakes! Lent! Golf! March has been a true delight in the music-PR department — I haven't seen this many dumbshit stunts since Jackass 3D . Let's roll up our sleeves and thrust our hands elbow deep into a steaming pile of press releases:

The Big Hurt: Calling all Rembrandts! While scouring the press release bin for cheap laughs, I came across a story of some legitimate interest: a coalition of Dutch artists recently took out an ad in the New York Times advising "Do Not Enter the Netherlands — Cultural Meltdown in Progress."

The Big Hurt: Alternative rock songs I got up this morning filled with a furious hatred of alt-rock — I was tossing and turning half the night with Third Eye Blind's "Semicharmed Life" stuck in my head, a torment I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

THE BIG HURT: DIVING IN THE PR DUMPSTER | February 26, 2013 I've been dumpster diving in the PR bin, the rankest receptacle of music industry waste, and I've come up with a dripping fistful of the month's hottest garbage.

THE BIG HURT: LEANIN' WITH BIEBS | February 20, 2013 Bieber was allegedly photographed sipping something from a double Styrofoam cup, in close proximity to a big bottle of codeine cough syrup. This can only add up to one thing: lean . That purple drank, the laudanum of Screw, the deadly nectar of Pimp C.